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Wong Yat-cheong, known professionally asWong Jing (Chinese:王晶;pinyin:Wáng Jīng, born 3 May 1955),[1] is a Hong Kong filmmaker and actor. A prolific filmmaker with strong instincts for crowd-pleasing and publicity, he played a prominent role inHong Kong cinema during the 1990s.
Like many Hong Kong film figures of his time, Wong began his career in television – in his case, scriptwriting for local juggernautTVB beginning in 1975 (Teo, 1997). He moved on to writing for theShaw Brothers studio. There, he made his directing debut withChallenge of the Gamesters (千王鬥千霸) in 1981. This start foreshadowed his later successes with movies about gambling, such asGod of Gamblers, starringChow Yun-fat andAndy Lau, which broke Hong Kong's all-time box office record upon its release in 1989, and started a fad for the genre.
Wong has directed, produced or written over 175 films (Yang, 2003), occasionally acting in them as well. He works with an efficient mass production method making heavy use of directing assistants and allowing him to work on several movies at once. He works under the umbrellas of two production companies he launched, Wong Jing's Workshop Ltd. andBoB and Partners Co. Ltd. (Best of the Best), the latter in partnership with directorAndrew Lau and writer-producerManfred Wong (Bordwell, 2000).
He once commented that his movies were hits because he gave the people what they wanted, and not what he thought they should want. A typical Wong production might be a broad comedy (Boys Are Easy, 1993) or an entry in a currently popular genre, such asmartial arts (Holy Weapon, 1993),erotic thriller (Naked Killer, 1992) organgster film (Young and Dangerous, 1996). It will imbue its model with lightning pacing and frequent shifts in tone to accommodateslapstick andtoilet humor, sentimental heart-tugging, cartoonish violence, sexual titillation, andparodic references to well-known Hong Kong andHollywood films.
Wong also directed or produced several of the films of comic actorStephen Chow, who has been Hong Kong's most popular performer since the early 1990s. Examples of their collaborations includeGod of Gamblers II (1991),Tricky Brains (1991),Royal Tramp I andII (1992) andSixty Million Dollar Man (1995).
Wong's commercial skills are not limited to the content of his movies or his casting. He was usingHollywood-style cross-media promotional tactics – such as tie-in novels, comic books and other products, and magazine interviews – long before they became common in Hong Kong (Bordwell, 2000).
Wong's style, often seen as loud, crass andphilistine, may be another factor in his low stock among critics. According to directorAnn Hui, he remarked of Hui's acclaimed 1990 dramaSong of the Exile, "Who wants to watch the autobiography of a fat woman?" In 1994, unidentified assailants attacked him outside his offices and knocked out his teeth; this was widely believed to have been retaliation for injudicious remarks, ordered byTriads or Chinese organized crime figures, whose involvement in the industry is notorious,[2] although Wong himself is rumored to be involved with the Triads.[3]
In the late 1990s and 2000s, Wong's films fared much worse in thebox office compared to his earlier output due to the sluggish recession which had enveloped Hong Kong cinema in the new millennium. However a number of his films released in the 2010s, such asFrom Vegas to Macau, saw renewed success for the director, particularly in mainland China.
